NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Review - Dual GK104 Kepler Greatness

GTX 690 Specifications

On Thursday May the 3rd at 10am PDT / 1pm EDT, stop by the PC Perspective Live page for an NVIDIA and PC Perspective hosted event surrounding the GeForce GTX 690 graphics card. Ryan Shrout and Tom Petersen will be on hand to talk about the technology, the performance characteristics as well as answer questions from the community from the chat room, twitter, etc. Be sure to catch it all at http://pcper.com/live

Okay, so it's not a surprise to you at all, or if it is, you haven't been paying attention. Today is the first on-sale date and review release for the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 4GB dual-GPU Kepler graphics card that we first announced in late April. This is the dream card any PC gamer out there combining a pair of GTX 680 GK104 GPUs on a single PCB and running them in a single slot SLI configuration and is easily the fastest single card we have ever tested. It also the most expensive reference card we have ever seen with a hefty $999 price tag.

So how does it perform? How about efficiency and power consumption - does the GTX 690 suffer the same problems the GTX 590 did? Can AMD hope to compete with a dual-GPU HD 7990 card in the future? All that and more in our review!

Kepler is a 3.54 billion transistor GPU with 1536 CUDA cores / stream processors contained within and even in a single GPU configuration is able produce some impressive PC gaming performance results. The new SMX-based design has some modest differences from Fermi the most dramatic of which is the removal of the "hot clock" - the factor that ran the shaders and twice the clock speed of the rest of the GPU. Now, the entire chip runs at one speed, higher than 1 GHz on the GTX 680.

Each SMX on Kepler now includes 192 CUDA cores as opposed to the 32 cores found in each SM on Fermi - a change that has increased efficiency and performance per watt quite dramatically.

Many of the details surrounding the GTX 690 have already been revealed by NVIDIA's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang during a GeForce LAN event in China last week. The card is going to be fast, expensive and is built out of components and materials we haven't seen any graphics card utilize before.

Depsite the high performance level of the card, the GTX 690 isn't much heavier and isn't much longer than the reference GTX 680 card. We'll go over the details surrounding the materials, cooler and output configuration on the next page, but let's take some time just to look and debate the performance specifications.

NVIDIA markets the GTX 690 as having 3072 CUDA cores and 16 SMX units. This is correct but we have to keep in mind that we are looking at two separate GPUs, each with 1536 cores and 8 SMX units to get to that total. Each GPU also sports 128 texture units and 32 ROPs. That is a LOT of processing power on a single graphics card but I have always stated that having multi-GPUs of performance is never as ideal as having the same performance on a single GPU for some pretty obvious reasons. Obviously you can't get a single GPU with this much horsepower so the debate is somewhat altered but don't expect to see 2x the performance of a single GTX 680 with this card - standard SLI rules apply.

The base clock speed is 915 MHz, a drop of 91 MHz (10%) compared to the base clock on the single GPU GTX 680. Back when the GTX 590 was launched with a clock speed of 607 MHz, that was a drop of 27% compared to the clock speed of 772 MHz on the GTX 580 so the result will be performance is likely much closer to "two 680s" than we reached towards "two 580s".

Better still, the Boost Clock of the GTX 690 is 1019 MHz, only 39 MHz (4%) lower than that of the GTX 680. So, in a typical game in a typical scenario, we expect the GTX 690 to run within 4% of the performance of a pair of standard GTX 680 cards running in SLI. NVIDIA was able to accomplish this by binning the GK104 GPUs to find those that offered the best performance efficiency and had the least leakage, able to clock higher while using less power.

Each of the GK104 GPUs will have access to its own 2GB frame buffer running at the amazing 1500 MHz / 6 Gbps data rate, so again we don't expect to see any performancce drop because of this new implementation.

The output configurations are noted here as well and include a set of three dual-link DVI connections and a single mini-DP port. If you are running a Surround configuration you can actually just use all three dual-link DVI connections but if you are only interested in multiple monitor mode, one of the DVI's is disabled - more on that later.

I am I the only one out there that thinks this card is to expensive? This is what not making since to me the GTX580 599 when it came out. GTX590 699-799 when it came out. GTX680 499. GTX690 1000.

I am sorry but that cost is way to high for a single video card regardless if it's 2 chips. I hope nvidia falls flat on there face. But has they say there is a lot of stupid people who will buy this card at that price.

The reason the price is so high is because IT IS what they say it is: fastest card on the planet. Let me put it simply: 680= $500K Ferrari. 690= million dollar F1. 690 is for those enthusiasts with the wallet.

I think with the 580 and 590, the 590's performance didn't match that of two 580s in SLI while the 690 does match two 680s in SLI. I think from that perspective the price makes some sense. I'm not happy to see the return of the thousand dollar video card, but there are other options too.

Although the Mars 2 was considerably more card than two 580s yet it wasn't twice the price. Then there is the whole issue of it being impossible to buy a Mars card.

I don't see what's wrong with a dual GPU card being $1,000 if it's okay for the single GPU card to be $500. Does that mean you think two single GPU cards for $500 each is okay, but stuffing a single $1,000 card is just "too much"?

Yeah, it's over-priced, but exactly what kind of price point would you plan on hitting with the different offerings they have right now, without severely undercutting the competition, unnecessarily?

No, your the only one out their that is publicly complaining about the price tag of this card and how broke you are! Lol...calling people idiots that can afford to burn their $$ on this card? Really? I have this card and it smashes all games I load on it with all the setting set to ultra and well my eyes can only pickup 30 fps but believe you me the game play is excellent. Crysis, all settings are set to maximum and I'm not getting any tears or stutter...very smooth game play and in my book well worth the buy. I'll be looking at buying a second card next month why? Because I run x3 monitors and I will be playing 3D surround but the other reason is because I can not because I'm an idiot.

After see this review I'd rather wait for the GTX680 prices to come down to SLI them. I have one already and am not having issues running any of my games at their highest setting on my current monitor's(1600*1200)resolution.

You all seem to be forgetting that the 690 also has twice the vram of a single 680. This will matter if you plan on playing with 3 screens. I have 3 gtx 570 2.5 gig and battlefield 3 is using just under 2 gig vram, and the game is not even maxed out. Fyi 2 680s with 2 gig vram does not add up to 4 gig vram in sli. The system can only utilize the vram on one card. So there you have it, the 690 in my opinion is actually worth more than 2 680, do to the 4 gigs of vram.

It's the same deal on the 690. In the case of normal sli the textures need to be loaded into the memory for both cards and thus the memory is not added together. The same is true for the 690. It has 2gb per core and those same textures need to be loaded into both. And so the memory per core is exactly the same. In the case of these dual gpu cards you always half the memory that it says on the box to give you the accurate reading for the amount of memory that is going to be used.

Would there be any difference between SLI 680's and a single 690? I would think that although the 680's will take more space, that the dedicated slot will improve bandwidth capability (or maybe not because of the sli adapter?).

I am also very curious between the actual pro's and cons performance wise when comparing to this card to 2 680s in SLI. I am no savvy on mulit card setups but on the surface I see the benefits on only using a 2 slot form factor and less power with the 690, but worry a single point of failure with a very complex and hot running component. Would love to know if there are any performance advantages gained by having it on once PCB vs 2 cards in SLI.

The GTX 690 does make better sense than a 680 SLI setup if you are buying right now. If I were in the market though, I'd simply buy a 680, wait a year for the prices to come down, and then buy another. Yeah, I know, you're not getting the insane frame rates right now, but seriously, if you need something faster than a 680 at this time...let's just say I'd love to see the monitor setup!

Tri and quad SLI are well-known to scale badly, so this is nothing new.

The best scaling is achieved with Dual SLI. Above that, consider upgrading your card a notch instead of adding a third or fourth.

Let alone the issues concerning heat dissipation and power supply. For these last two, the 690 offers a (partial) solution but for the primary argument, the 690 changes nothing about the scalability of quad SLI.

Always go with the single gpu option for anyone thinking of going SLI. I have sli 570's right now and it's beautiful when it works but a LOT of games don't properly support it and never will. Until the technology gets better, go for a better single gpu IMO. Maybe not one that costs 1k but still.

Resolution is the key for what you purchase for graphics cards. If you do not play at 2650 or higher then you are wasting your money on this card. As I play at 5760 x 1080 I am very interested as my current 2 x 580 classifieds actually draw enough power to kick my breaker if my wife turns on the bathroom lights. I DO wish they had more vram on the cards, but for now it works just fine.

Wow. I'm surprised no one mentioned this yet - Newegg is already sold out of GTX 690 and they marked it up $200! I've posted a few times in response to people complaining about $999.99 price tag on this GTX 690 and that I think it's a great price considering that GTX 680s are currently selling for $550-650 retail. Of course, now newegg goes at $1199.99 with the 690. Thus is supply & demand.

For our single card comparison graphs, there are only four spots. The GTX 680 is the faster of the two current generation single-GPU solutions, so it seemed more relevant to include IT rather than the HD 7970. If you are still curious about how the HD 7970 compares to the GTX 680, I recommend checking out this article: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-680-2GB-G...

Well, the fact that it is overpriced is still a fact. But, if you can handle money and you can save properly you would be able to actually afford the card. Don't spend money on crap, and learn to save !

Look, nobody at all. NOBODY needs to buy the top of the line cards. You know why? i've got a 6790 AMD Radeon. and i will have that card for 4 years. After those 4 years. Yes, it might down in performance a little bit. But it's the exact reason Cross-fire was invented. then you just get ANOTHER 6790 which in 4 years will be half of what you purchased it for.

I know by personal studies that ALL cards top of the line over 900 frigging dollars is 150% pointless to buy. there are NO games out there TODAY in the 21st century that NEED that type of card. therefore YES, it (MIGHT) outperform cards IF there were games that required that card. BUT seeing as the only highly intense game at the moment that requires Rendering at a maximum for it's physics and a glowing picture for best performance and gameplay experience.... Is battlefield 3.

Now many can whine and moan. Offf, it's crysis 2. It's not. I played crysis on high setting with my 6 year old 5450Radeon. and i still have it to this day. Don't tell me its the most stressful game. It hasn't been proven. Since battlefield3 came out it has gone under countless awards and rewards. Many awards have been given due to their Intense realistic gameplay. Destruction 2.0 as many like to call it.. Or, it's "Physics 2.0" truthfully named. I'll tell you now, try playing on the office maps in Close quarters and shoot a .50cal down the cubicles and tell me those physics doesn't require rendering up the ass.

Spending 900 dollars on a graphics card that will be useless in 10 years and useful in 50 when battlefield 4000 comes out or whatever might. is Absolutely stupid. Until gamers get the knowledge in their head correctly. They'll never learn, and big companies will continue to make cheap products for big bucks that people can brag about and become smug.

Sorry to all the people buying 6990's and 690GTX cards. But my AMDRadeon6790 can outperform any of those cards

Remember... It matter what MODEL, it matter what YEAR, and it matter if you give a shit to clean it. Take care of something and you won't need to buy new crap for your computer every 3 years because "it got screwed up with dust residue" or the motor died out. Or the circuit board fried. Or i didn't wear an anti-static to fix my computer. or my computer keeps shutting down from overheating. No. your computer shuts down because you don't have enough power distribution cycling through your computer. Multiple rails is bad people.... Do the calculations of how many Watts your computer needs. as well as amps. you'll find it's not too hard. and you really don't need to buy super power house power supplies 1000watts.

I bought a GEFORCE GTX 650 and it was the worse video card I've ever owned. It crashed left and right with frame errors and NOT DETECTED boots. My last was a RADEON with 0 issues and I always had to resort back to it when my GTX wanted to take a break.

My next purchase will be another Radeon UPgrade. I'm done with Nvidia.

another thing is games, not all the games out there will let you play with 2 graphics cards, the 690 is one graphic card with 2 gpu's thus faking out the games and allowing you to play them, which is the main reason i bought one with 3 monitors set to 1920 x 1080

THERE IS NO 50% PERFORMANCE HIT HERE. THERE IS HARDLY ANY PERFORMANCE HIT. FRAMES-PER-SECOND ARE REPORTED AS PER EYE WHILE IN 3D MODE.

YOU NEED TO DOUBLE THE REPORTED FRAMERATE WHEN IN 3D MODE, AND ONLY THEN COMPARE IT TO THE 2D FRAMERATE. 3D VISION IS NOT MUCH OF A FRAMERATE KILLER, IF AT ALL.

FOR EXAMPLE, IF YOUR GAME RAN AT 120 FPS IN 2D MODE, BUT THEN REPORTS 60 FPS IN 3D MODE, THEN THERE IS NO PERFORMANCE HIT AT ALL BECAUSE IT IS 60 FPS PER EYE WHICH EQUALS TO 120 FPS. THE GAME IS STILL ACTUALLY RUNNING AT 120 FPS, AND THAT IS WHY THE FLUIDITY OF 60 FPS IN 3D MODE IS IDENTICAL TO THE FLUIDITY OF THE GRAPHICS AT 120 FPS IN 2D MODE.

YEARS LATER AND SO MANY PEOPLE, INCLUDING "PROFESSIONAL REVIEW SITES" CONTINUE NOT UNDERSTANDING THIS, AND THEY THEREFORE KEEP GIVING NVIDIA 3D VISION SUCH A BAD NAME AS THEY FALSLEY/INCORRECTLY CLAIM THAT NVIDIA 3D VISION KILLS/HALVES/SERIOUSLY DROPS FRAMERATES WHICH IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE AND COMPLETELY SHOWS THEIR MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE TECHNOLOGY.